


until the stars are silent, and my heart longs for home

by ayuemui



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, M/M, Sadstuck, death., i'm a writing project addict., just come to me with requests at this point.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4078393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayuemui/pseuds/ayuemui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The words were soft on Dave's tongue- but never spoken. He remembered it, bits and pieces that dug into his lungs and would never let go. The only substance shielding him from what he wanted was an illusion, and Dave's fingertips only ever graced the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	until the stars are silent, and my heart longs for home

It's still very, very cold.

Dave's fingers clench, painfully, against the seat. He holds them pinned roughly to his sides, as if there were locks tightening him in place. There's nothing to see here, his expression demands. Keep moving

But on the inside, it's so very different. It was the perfect, filled cliché for a funeral. He could feel the wind dusting at his hair, the crows mocking him in the distance. The air was thick with humid and midlife crisis, the raw _emotion_ of those attending.

The words were soft on Dave's tongue- but never spoken. He remembered it, bits and pieces that dug into his lungs and would never let go. The only substance shielding him from what he wanted was an illusion, and Dave's fingertips only ever graced the stars.

He remembers the sickly sweet boy he tried to hold onto. The way he fucked it up. The way that, "this is just a guy to guy thing, nothing more!" and he kept going with it. He knew where it was going. Inevitably, his whole body did. And yet, Dave went with the motions. His fingers creased John's skin, felt the soreness of his bones melt away beneath his lighthanded touch.

Dave sits between two people he doesn't bother to learn the names of. They make small talk, but Dave's focus is on the casket at the front. Of course he wouldn't look at. He wouldn't. It was impossible.

Dave remembered one thing the most about John during his death: the way he spoke. The way his words trembled the night Dave squared him in the jaw as they fought. The bouncing manner in which John spoke when they bickered playfully, the rough edge to his voice when John was above him in silent movement of nothing but warmth between them.

But it meant nothing.

It meant nothing to John, Dave thought. But it wasn't as simple as "fuck your best friend, hopefully he begins to love you". John found other people. He was happy. He considered Dave. He used Dave. And Dave didn't buckle down and consider himself.

No amount of fluctuating poetry or soft music could help Dave. He was alone, alone again, because the only thing you ever wanted (because he was so _selfish_ ) was someone to love and he wanted them. Wanted John. It wasn't arousing or erotic, the way Dave wanted, but it was intimate. 

(He remembers the way John touched his face that last night. No craving passion behind it, a movement painstakingly similar to a lover.)

Dave doesn't look at the casket when he passes. He preserves his favorite moments of John behind his eyes:

Stretching in front of the bathroom mirror on early college mornings.

Snorting out orange juice when Dave made a sarcastic quip about the Prince of Persia and erotic undertones.

John tapping the beat to a song with his foot, playing the chair in front of him as if it were an orchestra and he was the only one present.

In Dave's car, after short farewells, awkward exchanges with John's father, he wraps his fingers around the steering wheel and drives. A song blares from the radio. Dave doesn't bother catching the words. 

He misses John. Best friend or lover. It hardly mattered. Because even as Dave hated him, Dave loved him, too, because John was a light in the world of darkness with his snarkiness and bright, playful intelligence that could brighten Dave's mood like no other.

That thought sends a spike of pain right into his chest and he slightly jumped in his seat. It stings when he tries to think about it.

He doesn't.

There's a moment of dull ache when the green light turns yellow and Dave all but slams the breaks. The seatbelt cuts painfully into his neck but he doesn't give it a second thought.

He bothered to wear a seatbelt. John was always on his case about it. At least the (wonderful) bastard could rest in peace (pieces, because that's how he went).

Dave needed to pick up his pieces.

Only that the pieces are not missing, but there's no picture. The picture is blank- and a solid canvas awaited him with open arms.

Dave doesn't know where he drives. But once he arrives, he knows he tumbles onto the grass with a choke and a wheeze.

Alone. Thank God.

It was the most wonderful gift, being in a drunk state of mind and not knowing where he was. That no one could see him here, no one would down him in his other grief.

Dave, in a dazed stupor, could hardly tear his eyes from the brilliant gaze above. The moon sat, suspended, as if on a tightrope hanging to the sparse clouds that tore through the sky as if they had wings. The stars became blurry in his vision

He reached up for them, but found he couldn't bring them back down. Dave lowered his arms. 

It hurt. The desperateness of his situation, the pile that grows ever larger with the problems that are shoved aside roughly like old news. Dave was the strongest, you were the only person in the group who would defile himself to a point to get a boy to fall in love with him.

Dave could smell the liquor they'd drank on the night they first came here, to the cliff overlooking the dinky town they lived in. The smell of grass was sharp and wet, dew clinging to the blades in the youth of the night.

Dave loved until there's nothing left: until there only an empty husk of himself that has gained so much but lost much more than he could ever have. It sends another hollow shock up his spine.

_"Do you think that they're actually people?" John had asked him, very long ago. They'd sat here, on the same cliff, avoiding the dull weight of finals on their chests._

_"Nah. That fairytale nonsense is only fairly crafted for Disney." Dave responded, with a shrug. He laid back against the grass, looking up disapprovingly. "If you think that our ancestors are gonna pull a Mufasa, I've got news for you. Mufasa, and out of this conversation. 'Cause that's dangerous territory in which one doesn't trek."_

_He'd shoved Dave's shoulder a bit roughly with a scoff and a short laugh. "Ha. Ha. Move faster. Mufasa. Call yourself clever, Dave."_

_"I only aim to please." Dave gave an upward twitch of his lips, and John had settled back down._

He couldn't tear himself away from the stars now. They were all that he needed.

Dave looked at his phone. A single message buzzed on the screen. He blinked, bleary-eyed and cold inside with his own grief (John was gone) before picking it up.

Dave remembered the time when John had come home bawling. Jane was gone, he said. Missing, they hadn't found her. But Dave knew they did, at an abandoned creek.

His sobs were joined by Dave and they held each other tightly, bound by grief and flaws between them in the grass. Dave drove back home with John in the passenger seat and it'd been silence between them.

(It turned into a heated moment later in the night, Dave remembered. It was John's kiss, his dextrous fingers over Dave's skin that weakened his resolve. Because Dave loved him, and John despised that love. But he was with Dave anyway, because he was too dense to realize that he, too, was enamoured.)

Dave feels another sob racking through his bones, and his eyes burn with the tears he sheds with the contacts still in. It hurts like a bitch, but he craves it like water and like the punch John aimed for his jaw on the night before he died.

He remembered how they fought, too. A shouting match. Back and forth. And John had driven away, angry and into the clutches of his own death.

The phone rang again.

And Dave threw his phone, chucked it. Jade, probably. Wondering why he'd left early. He always felt bad for never telling Jade about him and John. But he couldn't face her now. Her smile was the same as his, crooked in the right places. 

Dave looks up at the sky again, an endless black with light sparkled across. Dimly lit with hope, they sparked a fire in Dave's chest that put itself out quickly.

The sobs come. More. Aching and groaning and clenching his fists in the damp grass. Tears spilling over, ones that'd never dared to fall before in judgmental eyes. But Dave was alone.

The word rang through his ears like an emergency call.

And only then, did he say goodbye to John. Alone, because the only boy he'd loved was encased in the stars. And that was the end of it.

**Author's Note:**

> a frustrated prompt that came to me thirty minutes ago.
> 
> i needed to write sadstuck. and BANG! it happened. i'll take requests as well, don't hesitate to ask!


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